The study of historical Buddhism in premodern and early modern Southeast Asia stands at an exciting and transformative juncture. Interdisciplinary scholarship is marked by a commitment to the careful examination of local and vernacular expressions of Buddhist culture as well as to reconsiderations of long-standing questions concerning the diffusion of and relationships among varied texts, forms of representation, and religious identities, ideas, and practices. The twelve essays in this collection, written by leading scholars in Buddhist Studies and Southeast Asian history, epigraphy, and...

Provides an intellectual and literary history of the dynamic jurisprudence of the dhammasattha legal genre between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. Based on a critical study of hundreds of little-known surviving dhammasattha and related manuscripts, Buddhist Law in Burma demonstrates the centrality of law as a crucial discipline of Buddhist knowledge in precolonial Southeast Asia.